UAlbany student
Courtney Ann Hubbard having fun with a
friend's baby in Kumasi, Ghana. Hubbard
and the group of faculty and students
from UAlbany were preparing to go to
Kwame Nkrumah Science and Technology
University. (Photo by Shelly Bryson)

Courtney Ann Hubbard
went to Senegal, the Ivory Coast, and Ghana with
high purpose -- to retrace the footsteps of
slavery.

"Every waking minute of the trip had an impact on
me," said Hubbard, a graduate student in
Liberal Studies who traveled with fellow UAlbany
students and faculty this past summer.

UAlbany faculty Marcia
Sutherland and Kwadwo
Sarfoh offered the trip though UAlbany's
nationally-ranked
Department
of Africana Studies, and opened it to students
from a wide cross-section of disciplines. Sutherland
said that several students considered the trip the
most valuable experience of their lives because it
debunked the general negative view of Africa.
Hubbard returned to the U.S. with a new awareness of
the stereotypical way in which Africa is depicted on
TV as uniformly poverty-stricken and despairing.
"Knowledge acquisition was highly transformative for
them," Sutherland noted.

Renée Lucier DeCelle of the Office of International Education played a major role in terms of registering student participants for classes this summer and also joined them on the trip.

"Every
waking minute of the trip had an
impact on me."
Courtney Ann Hubbard

The group studied in Senegal and at the
University of Ghana's Legun campus. In Senegal they
went to Goree Island, one of the primary sites where
slavers held Africans captive before packing them on
ships for the dreaded Middle Passage to the
Americas.

"In Elmina, there was a room called the 'room of
no return' where our ancestors were to leave for the
Western world and never return to Africa again," Hubbard said.

Hubbard advises freshmen who'd like to make the
trip next summer "to be open to new experiences and
to appreciate the culture they embark on and understand that they are needed as agents for change on the continent. This was
not an opportunity for me, it was an obligation."